3rd Party Program might as well be legalized

[Seraphor]

Honestly, what the devs should really do if they want this 'grey zone' to be smashed forever is the following.

1) Make an in-game parser, with restrictions on its use to minimize abuse (party-wide only in extreme/savage/ultimate content and only as an option in pre-formed PF parties, personal only in all other instances, turned off completely in the overworld because there's no realistic need for that there).

2) Make it extremely clear that evidence of any use of third-party programs is subject to a ban.

Honestly, the only reason the 'grey zone' exists and the discourse around third party programs is so bad is because of their reluctance to do anything about parsers, and on some level, refusing to ban people for only parsing until it crosses the line into harassment is recognition of their value to the raiding community. But it's obvious that, as someone who used parsers since the Heavensward days, people have been using the current 'don't show, don't tell' stance regarding that to increasingly push forward with attempting to justify use of other types of third party tools whose sole purpose is actual cheating. People would probably still use third-party parsers for the sake of data collection for FFlogs, but the big thing is that legalizing parsers would rob the ability of people using other third party programs granting actual gameplay advantages to hide behind the current grey zone status quo.

There isn't a grey zone. 2 is already the case. If you get caught, you get banned. The thing is they don't go looking for people using third party software, you need to make it known and be reported.